Let us go then, you and I
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets.The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells.
It was a long night, and I awoke with black rings rimming my eyes. The hotel's a cheap one and they don't even try to hide it. It's written in every crack on the ceiling and every wallpaper rip, not that the wallpaper's anything worth observing. Some shadowy nightmare of a floral print, mildewed where it isn't trying to strangle you as it leans haphazardly off of the wall. I could hear the young people in the room beside me up all night. Une boum. As the French say. The goddamned French who call this a hotel. A party. A song blaring on the stereo. Pop group du moment. Paris Combo, was it? Les Nubians?
It was a long night, and I awoke to the final day of this tedious life. C'est la vie. La vie...qu'est-ce que c'est? I paid the receptionist and stepped out into the warm mid-morning of the last day. My last few euros went towards black coffee in a streetside cafe. Shabby and run-down, it had an air of sawdust and never-to-be-completed construction that was simultaneously melancholic and comforting. Turning my feet towards the Seine, my pockets were light and the sidewalk was smooth and everything made sense. Parfait. Finalement. I thought I saw an oyster shell beneath the green ripples. Before I drowned.
